"My backbone."

My Backbone

My backbone has been broken:
I can no longer stand straight.

If I stand a  bone pierces me,
If I bend beyond there.

I can no longer stand in the field of the eminent,
No one listens, not even trained teens.
They say my teeth are good on family grounds.

I have stepped on shame and shame has shamed me shamelessly,
Our fathers say the thing in between a man's leg
is not a plaything for children;
mine is like clay in the hands of these children.

If I beat them their parents throw phlegm at me.
A rag for the cooking pot does not complain of blackness.
Let me bear in silence the stones of the unsilent ones
While I wail and wait for the wheel of timid time to turn times.

If it turns against them they will know we are all tenants
In the hands of the landlord call misfortune.

I do not pray for this to happen
But timid time is turning times.